{"id":759371,"date":"2022-01-20T21:16:01","date_gmt":"2022-01-20T21:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/01\/20\/youve-been-unfair-to-philemon-baffour-kurt-okraku-slams-critics\/"},"modified":"2022-01-20T21:16:01","modified_gmt":"2022-01-20T21:16:01","slug":"youve-been-unfair-to-philemon-baffour-kurt-okraku-slams-critics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/01\/20\/youve-been-unfair-to-philemon-baffour-kurt-okraku-slams-critics\/","title":{"rendered":"You\u2019ve been unfair to Philemon Baffour \u2013 Kurt Okraku slams critics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"article-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/66156899.295.jpg\" alt=\"Dream FC right-back, Philemon Baffour\" title=\"Dream FC right-back, Philemon Baffour\" width=\"295\" height=\"211\" \/> <span class=\"image_caption\"><span>Dream FC right-back, Philemon Baffour<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"-webkit-user-select: none; -webkit-touch-callout: none; -moz-user-select: none; -ms-user-select: none; user-select: none;\">\n<p style=\"clear:right\" id=\"article-123\"> <b> Philemon Baffour yet to make any appearance for Black Stars after 2-years<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Black Stars knocked out of AFCON 2021 at Group stage<\/p>\n<p>Kurt Okraku deny imposing players on Milovan Rajevac<\/p>\n<p>The President of the Ghana Football Association, Kurt Okraku, has defended the inclusion of Dream FC right-back, Philemon Baffour in the Black Stars.<\/p>\n<p>The 20-year-old has earned 8 call-ups to the senior national team but  never made any  appearance for the Black Stars.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking in an interview on Asempa FM, the GFA president noted that Ghanaians have been unfair to a player who helped the Black Satellites with the U-20 AFCON and is also the vice-captain of Dreams FC.<\/p>\n<p>Kurt Okraku explained that Philemon Baffour deserves to be in the Black Stars just like any other Ghanaian.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think you are being unfair to Philemon Baffour. The young man is a Ghanaian just like every other person. He deserves the opportunity. He is the vice-captain of Dreams FC. He is a U20 champion,\u201d Kurt Okraku told Benedict Kwadwo Mensah on Asempa FM.<\/p>\n<p>Though there have been widespread rumours that GFA president is the brain behind the inclusion of the Dreams FC player, Kurt Okraku has denied ever influencing player call ups under coach Milovan Rajevac.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve listened to a lot of commentaries about the players Coach Milovan selected for the tournament and I wonder why there are complaints. Coach Milovan and his technical selected the players for our country and they stuck by that philosophy and we supported them throughout,\u201d Kurt said<\/p>\n<p>He added, \u201cNobody selects players for the Coach, if a coach has handled Ghana previously and allowed players to be selected for him, then he doesn\u2019t deserve to be the Coach.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Baffour was named as part of Ghana\u2019s 28-man squad for the 2021 AFCON tournament in Cameroon and still didn\u2019t feature for the Black Stars.<\/p>\n<p>On two occasions when the right-back position was vacant, Hearts of Oak captain Fatawu Mohammed and Daniel Amartey were used as a replacement while Baffour continued to warm the bench.<\/p>\n<p>The local-based player also missed Ghana\u2019s pre-tournament campaign in Qatar and joined the team two days to start of the tournament in Cameroon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dream FC right-back, Philemon Baffour Philemon Baffour yet to make any appearance for Black Stars after 2-years Black Stars knocked out of AFCON 2021 at Group stage Kurt Okraku deny imposing players on Milovan Rajevac The President of the Ghana Football Association, Kurt Okraku, has defended the inclusion of Dream FC right-back, Philemon Baffour in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":759372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[2556,1737,1603,2557,2558,1233,2559,2560],"class_list":["post-759371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-baffour","tag-critics","tag-kurt","tag-okraku","tag-philemon","tag-slams","tag-unfair","tag-youve"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=759371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}